AS a young man who will go out fairly regularly (albeit in Brisbane), I disagree with the new Sydney laws from what I have seen whilst out personally and the facts about alcohol violence etc I have read.
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE:
- To get into a fight, you either have to be fucking unlucky and be unfortunate enough to have a bloke who is probably on 6 drugs at once just totally randomly come and king hit you.
OR you provoke it, which is 99% of the time. How do you not provoke yourself from being hit you say? It's simple, you see dickheads and you MOVE THE FUCK AWAY, you don't talk to them, you don't go near their girlfriends, you don't do anything that will get you hit.
- The 0.01% of dickheads out there that do get into fights:
-Do not know the law or ANYTHING about it. They don't read the news, they don't know about mandatory sentencing or any reforms.
THEREFORE, these resolutions DO NOT DETER these people from hitting people. Even if they did know about them they are drunk and aren't thinking about that. This is the basic reasoning behind why mandatory sentencing is stupid.
Closing hours:
- Here in Brisbane we have a 3am lockout, and even that is stupid. I got caught in the lockout quite recently whilst moving from the Valley to the City (took 2 mins longer than it should have), and was refused entry at 3am.
There was a whole bunch of people in the same boat, many of whom had had a lot to drink, who then went into the cab line and were trying to start people.
- If you do the same thing only SHUT the places at 3am, I would shudder to think what would happen when 1000's of people angry that their night has been finished because the government says so would do in these cab lines etc as they all simultaneously spilled onto the street.
Furthermore, I just detest the Government saying you can and can't do things like this.
Statistics:
This is perhaps the most interesting part of the debate and we see Newcastle etc dragged in a lot here. Newcastle stats conveniently forget that the violence rate has gone down nationwide at around the same pace. I'm trying to find a source for this which i read back in February but no luck yet. Will edit it in.
Conclusion:
My view is that early shut down leads to more violence @ the precinct due to many intoxicated persons suddenly spilling out on to the streets and looking for a way to get home.
People won't come out earlier, Many are at parties etc that finish at midnight or 11 or thereabouts. They want to party until they see fit and making it finish at 3am only annoys them.
Less people will go out and just have their party keep going at home which is unsafe, away from police and can have far worse consequences.
Basically it's bad